Cuckoo's Egg

by C. J. Cherryh

  Cuckoo's Egg

  held to law. I traced Betan as far as Shbit. When I learned she'd surfaced again in Shbit's keeping and stayed alive— then I knew either Shbit himself was ghota or Shbit was being worked by one. I saw the pattern."

  Thorn turned his face from the sun a second time and looked at Duun, at a face rendered faceless by the mask, sun reflecting on plastic eyeshields.

  "Betan," Duun said, distant through the speaker, "may have been aimed all her life for what she did. Guild-service. A special kind of ghota. Gods know what the ghotanin had been feeding Shbit for information out of the department. Shbit was up against the ghota guild and totally outmatched…

  playing their moves against me and thinking they were his. Even Dallen Company. I can't say I didn't expect guild trouble. But there was law, again— I was trying to keep from destroying the council's autonomy.

  Dammit, they gave me too much. I let Shbit live because I knew he was a trigger I could pull, one the ghota would respond to. There's a spy in Ellud's office I've let stay. Sagot's mine."

  (Something's still faithful in this world. O Sagot, one bit of truth.)

  "…And you did what we'd been waiting for."

  "What did I do? That tape? That damned stupid tape? The numbers and the pictures?"

  "You survived it. You survived it, minnow, and you read it. And the meds would know what you knew in one more day— and the instant they knew, that unstopped leak would send the news straight to our enemies; while Ellud wouldn't want to let you leave the building— I could overrule him, but he could have fought me on it and fouled things up beyond recovery.

  He's a good man; and honest: and he always wants more time than the opposition gives him. Some things I couldn't even tell Tangan himself.

  Like guild war. Like the fact I'd pulled the trigger."

  "This Shbit sent Betan when he knew we'd left the city."

  "You're catching onto it. He gave a ghota a courier plane and never suspected she'd been hired by her own guild to be hired by him. He had to give her a ghota crew: no kosan would fly her to us."

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  "Why come here for the gods' sake?"

  "She couldn't overtake us. For Shbit— she was supposed to go in and wail and howl and put on a good act. Disgrace you. Keep you out of the guild.

  Create scandal. For the ghota— she was to walk in there just the way she did and deliver a message from her guild. You read Tangan. He wouldn't bend. That's clear to you and me— but ghotanin have a guiding belief that everything can be bought if you set the terms up right; she walked in there and saw she hadn't the right coin… by her way of looking at it. It was clear when she said keep you out the way she did she wasn't talking for Shbit. Tangan knew it then. Read what she was and knew what I'd done to him and knew why. And forgave us both." Duun was silent for a long while.

  And men and women died for them, would be dying, now, in planes which darted and fired missiles no one saw except on screens.

  (Damn you, Duun. Is even this a maneuver?)

  "I liked him." Thorn said at last. "I liked Tangan, Duun."

  "I didn't betray him. I gave him the power he needed. I set him free. Do you understand?"

  "To stop the ghota?"

  "To back what I do. Don't you understand it yet, minnow? You will."

  Static sputtered, Duun's hand at the side of his mask clicking the other channel in. "How are we doing?"

  "Dsonan's screen's going to drop in a minute to let us through," the pilot's voice came to them. "It's hot up ahead. Two missile strikes got to the base.

  The 3rd Wing's going to throw everything they've got at them while we get in, sey Duun."

  "Gods save them," Duun muttered. "Gods save us all. Do it right, Manan."

  "Damn sure trying."

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  Thorn eased over to look out the canopy as best he could. There was no sight of anything beyond their wings, beyond the pitiless sun and the endless sky.

  Static snapped again. "Not to make you nervous, minnow," Duun said,

  "but what that means is Dsonan's keying its missile defenses down to give us a window to get in, and don't ask me what happens if something glitches. Kosanin are moving to be sure nothing gets through that gap for the five critical minutes it's going to take us to get through that screen.

  Then it goes up behind us. When we get on the ground we get over that side and off that wing: and it's going to be hotter than hell. You go down that wing edge and jump once I'm down. I'll steady you in landing. Don't think about anything, just run for that shuttle pad and go."

  "Shuttle?"

  "Tallest thing you'll see in front of you."

  "I know what it looks like! Where are we going?"

  "Station."

  Static snapped. The nose of the plane dipped in a dive. Altitude traded for speed.

  ("Mach two plus if it has to.")

  Thorn trembled. There was pain, pain from his burns, from warmth; he gasped at the sluggish thin feed of the mask and his nose and throat and eyes were raw. Sweat ran on him. There was a high strange sound, a sense that quivered through his bones and bowels like elemental fear. (I'm scared, Duun; Duun, I don't want to die like this—) There was a blur ahead of them, the first substance there had been, a shadow in front of them, a blaze of light.

  (That's ground coming up, that's the river— O gods, that's ground, the city—)

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  Pressure began, a constriction of his limbs, the pain again— the world tilted violently and became half earth and sky split vertically, flipped straight again as Thorn felt the straining of the straps. (They'll break, I'll go up and into the canopy, I can't hold on—)

  Then another force slammed in, and they were losing speed. One ear failed to pop, reached a painful point and pressure went on and on in acute agony that made one fabric with other things.

  Smoke on the horizon. Smoke palling the city in the one direction, a gray blur to either side.

  A runway ribboned out of the forward perspective, a straight pale line ahead. The plane came in knife-straight, sank on its haunches in a long jarring rush before the thunder of the reversing engines made headway against their speed. More speed down. More. Tires squealed and the jets roared again as a gantry loomed up, a shuttle poised like a white tower against the smoke-stained sky. On the horizon a red sun burst and swelled and faded. Another, burning bright.

  Closer and closer. The plane jolted and thumped and rocked over uneven pavement; there was a truck coming toward them. The plane's canopy retracted and metal stank, pinging and popping with heat. Duun reached and yanked connections as the engines whined down: popped Thorn's belt and his own, stood up and vaulted the side. Thorn scrambled up on the seat, flinched at heat and saw Duun spring from the wing's back edge to the truckbed and go to one knee as he landed; Thorn rolled over the side and hit the wing as Duun got up, strode once on a yielding surface and leapt for the truckbed and Duun's arms.

  Duun and he both went down, rolled, and the truck lurched into motion, leaving the plane dwindling behind. On the horizon more suns burst, and one flowered in the sky and faded in a smudge of smoke.

  Duun held onto him. Thorn trembled, felt Duun unfasten his mask for him and let him fill his lungs with cold gasps of air. Duun clenched him the tighter as the truck whined and jolted and the gantry towered into view, white girders against the smoke-ravaged sky. It braked. "Out," Duun said, 191

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  and helped him balance as he got up, vaulted the rear of the truck to the ground and was there to steady him when his feet hit the pavement.

  "Come on. Run! " Duun dragged him for the gantry, for the white wall that was a shuttle fin. There was an elevator, its door open, and a woman who motioned at them hurry, hurry, in a violence like an oath. They made it in: the woman shut the door and moved a bar-switch that set them moving up.

  The whole elevator reeked of their su
its and sweat and fear, and Thorn staggered as it lifted. Duun's hand met his chest. "Hold on, dammit, Thorn! Hold on!"

  Thorn locked his knees, leaned on the wall with his forearm. Girders whipped past the window in a blur; then the woman jammed down the switch and the car slammed to a stop. The door opened, showing them a thick-walled open hatch.

  "Come on," Duun said, and shoved Thorn into it and followed. Thorn looked back in distress as explosions came like distant thunder.

  Still outside, the woman swung the hatch shut, disappearing in a diminishing crescent of the murky sunlight. Thump. (What about her?) The world seemed an unsafe place, no place to leave alone. But Duun spun him about and all but threw him into a seat in this cubbyhole of a place, one of three seats built flat on this dimly lighted floor.

  "Belt in," Duun said, and Thorn groped for belts as Duun fell into his seat and got them, fastened them for him and got his own helmet off. Duun hugged it to his breast and pushed a button on the arm of the seat. "We're set, we're set back here."

  "Understand you clear."

  Thorn stripped his helmet off with his wrists; Duun helped him, bent and stowed it in a bin in the floor beside his seat. The lid latched and echoed hollowly. Thorn lay there breathing in great gasps while Duun secured his own belts. "They're waiting on the attendant to get down the escape route,"

  Duun said, his own head back, his eyes shut. "Driver of that truck's got to get out too."

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  "What about the plane?"

  "Maran and Koga— they're headed out and over to Drenn. Refuel and up again. It's their wing that's taking the beating out there. They'll have a window— ours: they've got to take that missile screen down again for us to clear this port."

  (People are dying. Everywhere those shells go off. All those people—) A thunder began to grow. (They're hitting close to us.) Sweat flooded Thorn's body in a sickly sense of doom; then the sound went to his bones and the force came down on him, dizzying and all-encompassing. Another thunder began, pieces of the ship rattling, as if it was all coming apart.

  (We won't make it, we won't make it— some missile will stop us.) The weight grew, pressing him down into the couch.

  They were leaving the world. Everything. There was void ahead, incomprehensible and without end.

  (I looked up at the moon and tried to see where they were, but of course I couldn't.)

  (The world's wide, minnow, wider than you know.) (The world's beautiful. Haven't you seen it in pictures?) 193

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  XIV

  There was peace, eerie peace and stillness, in which moving cost little and breathing cost far less. A gentle air touched Thorn's face and a breeze stirred against his cheek.

  Duun floated above him, balanced crazily on one arm that gripped the back of the seat. Thorn blinked, and Duun freed him of the restraints. A little move of Thorn's arm against the seat freed him from the cushion.

  "We're up," Thorn murmured. "We're up."

  "Where the worlds spin, yes. You can be easy awhile, minnow. It's a great ocean you've come to. It's easy to move and easy to move too far." Duun grinned at him. (Can he smile after all that? Can he be happy? Can anyone ever, after that?)

  Duun pulled gently at his wrist— "Keep your arm stiff. Never mind, don't try to hold." The fastenings of the flightsuit gave way. Duun's own suit drifted in pieces, loosed at chest and wrists and ankles. Duun worked him free: torque set them spinning and they drifted together while the cabin revolved slowly about them.

  Freedom, then, Thorn drifted, shut his eyes in exhaustion, half-slitted them to watch Duun come and go through a hole he had not seen before. A hatch had opened above them. In the lazy spin Thorn caught sight of white light, of shonun bodies that drifted to and fro about some business. Duun went up to that place and sailed down again like some graceful diver.

  Duun's ears were up; his eyes were lively and bright.

  (He knows this, he knows all of it, he's been this way more than once.)

  "Where are we going, Duun?"

  "Hush. Rest. People are busy."

  "What's happened to the world?"

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  "It's still there. Fighting's centered mostly now around the shuttleports and Avenen and Suunviden, but it's dying down now— now that we're away and there's not a damn thing they can do about it."

  "Why did we do it? Where are we going?"

  "Why, why, and why? There's a shower on board. I'm going to use it.

  When I have I'm going to tape some plastic around those hands of yours and make you pleasanter company." Duun drifted off from him. Thorn twisted in midair and saw him disappear down yet another hole. Thorn tried to maneuver himself, spun and brought up against the cushions, remembering only at the last moment not to use his hands; he rebounded helplessly and drifted, waiting.

  * * *

  A vacuum went on in the shower and Thorn watched the water droplets run in clinging trails until they were gone and the lamp dried him. He elbowed the latch and drifted out again, turned once in midair in slow revolution before Duun snagged him and wrapped a plain blue kilt about him, tugged the self-belt about his waist with a touch familiar years ago, exactly the snugness, exactly the way Duun had done it then— Thorn looked into Duun's face from a grownup angle, met him eye-to-eye when Duun finished with the small pat on the side he had given him when he was small. Time went backward and forward, spun like the room. "Follow me," Duun said, trod on the cabinet wall and drifted upward with unerring grace through the narrow hatch.

  Thorn kicked off, angled his body with what grace he could manage and sailed through in Duun's wake, followed him again, up into a light, into the mind and heart of the shuttle where crew came and went.

  They stared— (they shocked; they want to be polite; they don't know whether to stare or not, whether staring's honest or only rude.) Duun drifted on and stopped and Thorn imitated his move, ignoring the stares—

  (The world in flames. They ought to hate me. I don't blame them. I was born for it.) And he floated strangely free, taking all their blame, ignoring 195

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  their eyes on his smooth pale skin, suffering Duun's grip on his arm that drew him toward the window.

  The bright blue world— was there. Its fires were invisible. The perspective denied everything— the fires became one more illusion beyond a window; his life shrank to invisible scale, lived out on a mountain and in a city whose burning could not even stain the clouds.

  He stared and stared, and the tears beaded in his eyes until his blinking drove them. He wiped his eyes and a droplet floated free from his fingertip, perfect, a wobbling orb like the world in space.

  "Do you love it?" Duun asked. "Do you love it, minnow?"

  "Yes," Thorn said when he could say anything at all. He wiped his eyes again. "It's still there."

  "So long as you aren't on it," Duun said, and it was truth; he had seen it.

  Thorn's chest ached. He put out a hand and touched the window and the world.

  * * *

  The ship left the world, while they belted in below. The engines kicked them hard and long. Thorn shut his eyes. I can't sleep, I can never sleep, he told himself, but the strength ebbed out of him and he felt the pain reminding him of what he was and what it cost, constantly, like the beats of his heart. "Drink,"

  Duun said, and fed him something through a straw that he wanted no more of after the first sip. "Drink it." Again, in that voice that had drilled him all his life, and it left no choice. Thorn drank, and slept; and when he woke Duun slept by his side— his unscarred side toward him, that side that gave its own illusions, of what Duun had been before.

  Thorn shut his eyes again. (Is Sagot alive? Did Manan and the other pilot live? The guild— did the missiles defend it?)

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  (Children standing on the rock at Sheon, seeing red suns bloom on their horizons. Smoke palls the s
ky. Thunder shakes the ground.) (In the halls at Dsonen people run in confusion, not knowing where to go.) The sun whirls past the canopy and men like great insects manage the controls. The plane hangs in the sky and time stops. The war goes on in a moment frozen forever, all war, all time.

  Sagot sits in her lonely hall. There is thunder. She sits frail and imposing at the end of that room, waiting in front of all the empty desks.

  A shuttle flies in place and the universe rushes past it, sweeping the world out of its reach.

  * * *

  There were mundane things. There had to be: there were bodily needs, and Thorn cared stubbornly for himself, once Duun had shown him how things worked; there was a breakfast of sorts, and Thorn found his hands a little less painful. Crew came drifting through their compartment in the urge of like necessities and coming back again. There was still the surreal about it, like the drifting course they took, a leisurely pace, a slowness like a dream. "Where are we going, Duun?"

  "Gatog."

  "Is that the station?" Thorn had never heard it called that.

  "It's one of them." Duun said.

  (Is there more than one?) Sagot's teaching developed cracks, fractured in doubts. (Is no truth entire?)

  "We had a report," Duun said, "the ghotanin have sent a messenger to Tangan offering to talk. The kosan guild refused at first, but they're going to relent."

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  "Is that part of your solution?" Thorn asked. His mind worked again. Duun looked at him with that closed hatani stare to match what Thorn gave him.

  "Balance is," Duun said. "It was never my intention to destroy the ghota."

  "They call you sey Duun."